Running into Bullets

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by WildBeans: 22.02.2009 18:00.

edit: This is my blog page. It started out as a complaint about the number of times I ran into AA in a few sessions. I love complaining. And then it turned into a log for my progress when I realised I had posted it in the blog section. Now it is something I'm trying to use to make sure that I have goals that I work towards and achieve.

I play mainly sit n go's but every now and then try out a bit of NL or even FL just to round everything off (I'd like to be good at anything and everything)

My main goal is to maintain a decent ROI. And work my way to $33 sng's which I will probably do at a bank roll of around 1800 - prob more since I'm feeling quite conservative these days. Anyway... hope you enjoy..

[end edit]

I just went through the maddest session.
At one stage I was playing two multi table sit n go's and doing pretty well on both.
In literally 3 hands:
In the one I got AKs on the button. I bet pretty high. One of the guys went all in. I called. He had AA.
Then I was down to a shortish stack, and immediately got QKs. I went all in, and a different person called me. AA. - out of that sng.
Meanwhile, the next hand in the other window I was chip leader of a 90 person sng, and I get KK. Some guy raised. I reraise 3 times. And then a different person went all in. I called. And lo and behold: AA.

Then I tried to work my way back in that tournament only to find my AJ come up against, yes you guessed it, bullets.

Then not quite tilting, (but at least fuming) I played a bunch of other $6 sit n gos, and I walked right into aces (again with good hands, although slightly low stacked) two more times.

All this was in the space of about an hour.
It was amazing. I felt like it was my first night in a columbian prison.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Hlynkinn: 21.10.2008 22:07.

It was amazing. I felt like it was my first night in a columbian prison.

lol

but for running into bullets... You know Phil hellmuth can dodge bullets... anyhow I don't complain too much about it... Sometimes it seems to happen more often but whatever... At least you can be happy if you played it right... And well it wasn't a one outer suckout or something like that...

Atleast I feel better pushing my AJs into AA then loosing With My KK to 32o

yeah well you posted this in the wrong section... But I guess thats just a good thing and now you can start your own blog here

Yeah I usually play at least 4, sometimes 5. And I've seen a lot of crazy bad beats. Or should I say I've been part of a lot of crazy bad beats. The worst is when you have AK, and two pair on the flop - some guy goes all in, and you call. He shows A 6, with a 5 on the board. Turn: 8, River: 7. - I swear I can feel it when that's going to happen.

But it's only when it happens on all the tables that I'm playing that I start to get a little tilty. Otherwise I'm quite strong

Originally posted by WildBeans
The worst is when you have AK, and two pair on the flop - some guy goes all in, and you call. He shows A 6, with a 5 on the board. Turn: 8, River: 7. - I swear I can feel it when that's going to happen.

Well in that case you would win with two pair
Since board would be AK578
Only way you could lose is that he would have (higher) flush. I know what you meant btw just wrote wrong

haha, yeah i got that totally wrong (trying to exaggerate
)
How about we change it to getting trips on the flop, 77 with an A 7 5 board, he calls all in with A 9, and 6 8 miraculously appear. It's always something like that... murphy's poker laws.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by WildBeans: 24.10.2008 16:37.

Alright so this is the start of my blog then.

It's been 4 weeks, since I received the $50 (which I received it at Fulltilt), and I've spent my time reading articles and playing sng's. It's been a good month I think. This is what my pokerstrategy points table looks like:

My bankroll is sitting at $500, and it seems pretty stable. But my big worry is that I'm experiencing an extended upswing, and that I'm headed for a downslide.

I did obviously experience some downswings along the way, like when I was around $250, I suddenly found myself after a couple of hours down to $130 - playing 5 to 6 tables at once. But I just kept at my game, and it was back up again.

I also tried moving up to higher buy ins. But when I experienced bad luck, it was too nerve wracking for me and my bankroll. So I moved back down again.

According to official poker rankings, I've played around 540 sngs and been ITM 228 times with 78 first places with an ROI of 12% (although they lost a couple of days worth of SNGs due to the FT upgrade).

I did do a couple of crazy things though (maybe not so crazy, more like a little bit of gambling). The last one was two days ago, when I was trying to install elephant. I wanted to see if the HUD was working so I sat down at the first no limit table I could find - which was an NL50 table (6 handed), and I put down $20. The HUD wasn't working, but it said I just need to wait a couple of hands. I did, but it still wasn't working. Of course I then thought it meant I have to play some hands
(and people were raising every hand). So I called the next one with K2s, and two diamonds flopped. I then called a pot raise with the flush draw (yes I know), and I hit a diamond on the turn. So I went up by $10. Then I was feeling reckless. So I called another diamond hand preflop: K8s, and the board flopped my draw. I then called another pot size raise (again, I know), and I hit on the river. So I left with table with $42, vowing never to go beyond my bankroll again.

I generally play only the top %10 of cards (except when ICM kicks in - then I judge it on the other players) - so I don't think I'm doing anything too stupid (besides the above story). What are the chances that I'm just lucky so far?

My goal for the next month is to achieve gold status. I think I could have done it this month, but I could only put in an hour or two each day, with the odd exception.
Also, I may start playing some MTTs. I guess I would just like to be ITM in one of those.
I like keeping things simple.

Since you play a lot and your a member here... It's not likely that your just lucky so far.. Your probably good enough to beat the limit your on... Though you probably have a lot of leaks to work on like most of us

I played my first MTT today. It was a $10 ($3000 guaranteed) tourney, and I played pretty well to come 8th (out of 450) and win $112. I'm a little upset I didn't do better, but I think it was a good result.

The hand that helped a lot was AK where I reraised and had 4 callers, with a flop of A K 7. Someone went all in, I called, and another person as well. The one guy showed AQ and the other showed 77. I was cursing my luck, when the turn showed a blank. But the King on the river certainly brightened my day, and it gave me the fight I needed to go on.

It seems that I'm experiencing a lot of firsts recently. This one's not so fun. My first real downswing. It was really frustrating. Every time I had the better hand something would come on the river. It happened for about 4 hours, and left me $200 down. I think it started because I was beginning to feel invincible: in the last couple of weeks I've won a couple of live tournaments and I placed in my first online MTT the other day, as well as increasing my $50 to $1000. So I thought I was a god. Unfortunately I'm not - or at least I'm not always god.

My downswing came because I decided to move up to higher limit SnGs. And I lost every one that I played. I moved back down last night, and I've been slowly rebuilding. I'm back at $872 after the rakeback I just received, although at one stage I was at about $780.

My favourite hand was when I had AA, and I got an all-in caller. He showed 55.
On the flop: 5 K 5
Turn: K
River: K
It was weird. I wish I had gone all in with K2o. But it's also interesting that if he only got one 5 on the flop, then I would have won with a better full house. Unfortunately he got two.

My goal at the beginning of November was to achieve gold status, which I have just done. Unfortunately it was at the expense of actually growing my bankroll since I think I was too concerned with the strategy points and not about making correct decisions. That combined with trying to move up some limits and running through some bad patches.
But in any case, I am gold at pokerstrategy and also got silver iron man status at full tilt, which means a 10k freeroll, and a little chip on my name for a month. I think it's good going. As long as I'm always learning and searching for the right balance...

I've been trying out some tournaments recently. Played about 6 or 7 and I've got paid out in 3 so far. Last night was pretty good. I played the double deuce on full tilt (I won a satellite that I paid 1200 full tilt points for) and of the 9970 people playing I came 136th and made $149.. not bad. It was pretty beautiful actually. I played extremely tight, and I only had to suck out on two hands and didn't get any crazy suck outs the whole night. Until the last hand (which I've posted below). The guy was going all in on any shortish stack and blinds were high. I think I had to do it, and I knew I'd be ahead.. but I still got smashed by his rubbish.

That is similar to the way I went out of another tourney - I think it was a 5k rebuy. With 13 people left to go and having a medium stack this maniac reraises me when I have queens (see below). It's so hard when one terrible set of cards ruins all your hard work..

This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by WildBeans: 22.02.2009 17:50.

I think it was the end of november or something when I first broke the $1000 mark, and since then things have been very up and down but there seems to be a resultant stagnation. I can't break through. Whenever I go up to $1400 after days of hard work, it takes one session the next day for me to go back down to $1100. This has been happening consistently since the end of december. In fact the other night I played about 44 $22 sngs (the most I've ever done) and I came out like $10 ahead.

I think I'm playing pretty well, and making correct decisions based on ICM but I keep getting f'ed by worse cards and bad calls. For that reason I'm starting to think that ICM isn't the best way to play. You need to just be tighter than ICM especially when you have a big stack and it's near or on the bubble. When you're short stacked, you need the blinds to survive. But when you have a big stack (say 4000 and the others range from 1500 to 3000) you need to make sure that you at least make the money without getting rubbish calls from shortish stacks and losing because of some horrible run of luck.
I also think I'm not capitalising when I make the money. I've been coming 3rd a lot since I started being diligent with ICM. Before I would very often come 1st. So my profits aren't helping me enough. I therefore feel that more patience is necessary to convert 3rd's into 1st's - or even 2nd's because although percentage wise it's not that much different to 3rd, it still makes a big different in the end. For example one 2nd place pays for just under 3 sng's that you don't make the money in.

In fact I have started looking at sng's, and my bankroll based on buy-ins. (in some sense similar to saving and making bets in a limit cash game but on a more global level) Therefore making 2nd as opposed to 3rd saves me a buy-in, and a 1st saves me (or makes me) 4. I don't know if this is a healthy way of looking at it, but it is a result of this struggle to break through and maintain the $1500 mark.

By the way, I'm currently playing $22 sngs on FT with a bank roll of $1278..

edit: changed november to september in the first line
edit2: changed september back to november - was right the first time (september was when I joined)

One thing that didn't come out in my last post is how f-ing peeved I'm getting about the absolute bs that I keep seeing when I play. Working f-ing hard to get a decent stack with 4 people remaining and then seeing my AJ lose to A6 for my entire stack, or my Queens losing to A2o, and that's without mentioning the really bad suckouts (like AA vs 99 all in on a flop KT7 flop, turn 8, river J).. It just seems absolutely impossible to consistently win when you're playing correctly, almost always going in with the better hand and so often losing. Like I mentioned in the last post, when you work a week to go up $200 and then in a few hours you're down $200 and have to spend another week making that up, one can get very very very pissed off.
Yes I just went down $150. I f-ing hate poker.

It just seems absolutely impossible to consistently win when you're playing correctly,

This is true... variance is the reason why no poker player can consistently win... but we need to study the game and as we grow as players the times we actually win some money will be more often and we'll be loosing less of the time...

Variance is a bitch and that's why we need to look at our game in a bigger perspective than just one loosing session or whatever...

If your Stagnant for a few months, then I would suggest posting a pile more, in different
situations. Bubble, 3 handed, heads up, post apile of them and see if your game is as
good as it can be, maybe it will help you push ahead.